Bertrand Russell - Science Quotes

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I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.

Bertrand Russell
As for earthquakes, though they were still formidable, they were so interesting that men of science could hardly regret them.

Bertrand Russell
Science, ever since the time of the Arabs, has had two functions: (1) to enable us to know things, and (2) to enable us to do things.

Bertrand Russell
There seems scarcely any limit to what could be done in the way of producing a good world, if only men would use science wisely.

Bertrand Russell
Science can discuss the causes of desires, and the means for realizing them, but it cannot contain any genuinely ethical sentences, because it is concerned with what is true or false.

Bertrand Russell
I hold all knowledge that is concerned with things that actually exist - all that is commonly called Science - to be of very slight value compared to the knowledge which, like philosophy and mathematics, is concerned with ideal and eternal objects, and is freed from this miserable world which God has made.

Bertrand Russell
Science, whatever unpleasant consequences it may have by the way, is in its very nature a liberator, a liberator from the weight of destructive passions.

Bertrand Russell
Science has always prided itself on being empirical and believing only what could be verified.

Bertrand Russell
A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science.

Bertrand Russell
In art nothing worth doing can be done without genius; in science even a very moderate capacity can contribute to a supreme achievement.

Bertrand Russell
But we are not likely to find science returning to the crude form of causality believed in by Fijians and philosophers of which the type is "lightning causes thunder."

Bertrand Russell
A religious creed differs from a scientific theory in claiming to embody eternal and absolutely certain truth, whereas science is always tentative, expecting that modification in its present theories will sooner or later be found necessary, and aware that its method is one which is logically incapable of arriving at a complete and final demonstration.

Bertrand Russell
In former days, men sold themselves to the Devil to acquire magical powers. Nowadays they acquire those powers from science, and find themselves compelled to become devils. There is no hope for the world unless power can be tamed, and brought into the service, not of this or that group of fanatical tyrants, but of the whole human race, white and yellow and black, fascist and communist and democrat; for science has made it inevitable that all must live or all must die.

Bertrand Russell
The aspect of science as knowledge is being thrust into the background by the aspect of science as the power of manipulating nature.

Bertrand Russell
Science is no substitute for virtue; the heart is as necessary for a good life as the head.

Bertrand Russell
The discovery of causal laws is the essence of science and therefore there can be no doubt that scientific men do right to look for them. If there is any region where there are no causal laws, that region is inaccessible to science. But the maxim [is] that mushroom gatherers should seek mushrooms.

Bertrand Russell
While it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

Bertrand Russell
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.

Bertrand Russell
Science is what you more or less know and philosophy is what you do not know.

Bertrand Russell
Some men are so impressed by what science knows that they forget what it does not know; others are so much more interested in what it does not know than in what it does that they belittle its achievements.

Bertrand Russell
God and immortality, the central dogmas of the Christian religion, find no support in science.

Bertrand Russell
The prudent man of science acquires a certain instinct as to the kind of uses which may be made of present scientific beliefs without incurring the danger of complete and utter refutation from the modifications likely to be introduced by subsequent discoveries.

Bertrand Russell
The history of science abundantly proves that a body of abstract propositions - even if, as in the case of conic sections, it remains two thousand years without effect upon daily life - may yet, at any moment, be used to cause a revolution in the habitual thoughts and occupations of every citizen.

Bertrand Russell
Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of great importance.

Bertrand Russell
A life devoted to science is therefore a happy life, and its happiness is derived from the very best sources that are open to dwellers on this troubled and passionate planet.

Bertrand Russell
One of the most painful circumstances of recent advances in science is that each one makes us know less than we thought we did

Bertrand Russell
Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know.

Bertrand Russell
The man of science looks for facts that are significant, in the sense of leading to general laws; and such facts are frequently quite devoid of intrinsic interest.

Bertrand Russell
Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.

Bertrand Russell
When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there is no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force.

Bertrand Russell